V. I.

Lenin

29

To:   HIS MOTHER

August 17

The day before yesterday, Mother dearest, I received your letter of July 29 (August 10) and also a letter from
Manyasha.

I am surprised that you are always saying that I do not
write often; for a long time, as far as I remember, I have
been writing every week and sometimes twice a week— with every post, that is.

I am also beginning to wonder about the box of books; since I received information from Krasnoyarsk at the end
of June that the books should arrive about that time and
that a further 9 rubles would have to be paid on them, I have heard nothing more, although I immediately (July 1)
sent two letters to Krasnoyarsk about the books, one of them
with money. [1]

An acquaintance who had promised to see about my books has turned out to be irresponsible in the
extreme and does not even answer my letters. [2]

I have written a postcard with a pre-paid answer to Popova,
perhaps she will reply. It is a most annoying business! The worst
of it is that they do not even write, do not inform me of
the state of affairs! Has the carrier’s office been holding
it up? The scoundrels probably do not even guarantee to
deliver goods in time, nor accept responsibility for delays,
do they?

Anyuta also writes about the loss of your letters (by the way, I have received Gumplowicz and Archiv from her—my thanks for the two books). I do not know which
letters have been lost, I always acknowledge those I receive.
One letter was lying about for some two months in Minusinsk,
as I wrote before. I then wrote a complaint to the Minusinsk
post office and enclosed the envelope of that letter as
documentary evidence. [3]

If registered letters or packages by book post are lost, you must keep the receipts and
absolutely must demand compensation; that is the only way to teach these Siberian Ivan
Andreiches [4] to be careful.

There is nothing I can write about myself. The letters are short because life is very monotonous; I have already
described the appearance Of things from the outside; inwardly day differs from day only because today you are reading
one book, tomorrow you will read another; today you take
a walk to the right of the village, tomorrow to the left;
today you write one article, tomorrow another (I have now
been distracted from my main work by writing an article [5] ).
I am perfectly well, of course, go shooting now and again.
The weather is nasty—wind, cold, autumn rain, so I stay
at home most of the time. Probably there will be some fine
days in September. I intend going to Minusinsk to buy myself a few things—a lamp, some things for the winter,
etc. I am thinking of going with Prominsky.

Thank Manyasha for her letter. She wrote asking me what
I should like from abroad; Mitya, she says, wants a steel
watch.... Hm! Hm! I have a watch and it still keeps time, but an alarm clock would be (or, rather, might
be) very useful because here I sleep far too much and have probably not only made up for the sleep I lost in
the remand prison but have badly overdone it.... Only how will you send it here?... Unless you wait till someone
comes....

It is quite clear that Anyuta, as long as she lives in the
country, cannot fulfil my requests for books. If she should
chance to be in Berlin or Leipzig on the way back, then
perhaps she will be able to. I have already written that the
writer has agreed to my request to send me books, and that

I have received several from him (and shall probably receive
more in future)-which means that I am well enough off in this respect and as yet do not experience any shortage.

Kisses for you and my sisters,

V. U.

---
Notes:
[1]
The letters have been lost.— Ed .
— Lenin

[2]
It is not known who this was.— Ed .

[3]
The letter has been lost.— Ed .

[4]
Lenin refers here to Ivan Kuzmich Shpekin, the postmaster in
Gogol’s comedy The Inspector-General .

[5]
In August and September 1897, Lenin worked on the article, “The
Handicraft Census of 1894–95 in Perm Gubernia and General
Problems of ’Handicraft’ Industry”. Material from this article
was also used in The Development of Capitalism in Russia .

The article was intended for the journal Novoye Slovo but was
not published in that journal, which was suppressed in December
1897. The article was first published in 1898 in a miscellany of
Lenin’s writings entitled Economic Studies and Essays (see